So I’m relieved Im still here somehow.

I want to stay.

I want to live.

I want to continue the hard work of healing until I believe it deep in my bones that I am WORTHY.

And sadly, for some of you, that means accepting that I can’t afford to jeopardize that healing anymore.

The irony of knowing that most folks want healing for me to look like assimilation to their behaviors, their “new normal.”

When in reality the most powerful healing comes in remembering my life IS too valuable to be treated as expendable - and I’m worth love that *protects* me.

Because it turns out, I WANT to live.

Even if it means fighting every damn day against the never ending onslaught of messages saying it would be better if ppl like me were gone.

But I can no longer afford to let these messages come from those claiming to love and value me.

I’m not willing to risk my recovery like that anymore.

It’s too valuable.

*I’m* too valuable.

So once again, it is tempting to ignore the arrival of this quiet relief, knowing that letting go of ideation will ultimately force me to let go of some of the people who call me beloved - the very people who have begged me to find this sort of healing and choose to stay.

In the end, healing isn’t going to look what they had hoped or expected. And for that I am sorry.

But believing I’m worthy and valuable and important to this world is *entirely incompatible* with believing my very existence is worth less than the chance to eat inside an Applebees.

Believing I’m worthy means believing “love” that denies my inherent worth isn’t love at all.

Because you asked me to see my value. You asked me to believe I’m not only allowed to exist, but WORTHY of life - that I’m an important piece of this interconnected network of humanity, with unique gifts and roles to play.

And the problem for you, is that I listened.

I’m relieved I’m still here somehow, and I WANT to live again.

Something many of you hoped for, prayed for, even begged me to fight for.

And yet, the fact I truly WANT to live is the very reason some of you will likely lose me now.

The relief that you’re still here might have come like a whisper in the night, but truly choosing to commit to it, truly choosing to stay NOW? That will be anything but quiet - and won’t actually feel like “relief” at all.

Because it means letting go of the twisted sort of security blanket your ideation had unknowingly become, climbing out from under those covers, and facing the harsh light of this pandemic day with both eyes wide open.

But if you turn to acknowledge the relief? If you seize on to it with both hands and clench for dear life - because in fact, your life IS dear to you once again?

You will be forced the feel the FULL reality of just how endangered that life really is, & just how many of your beloveds have chosen to use your body, & the bodies of so many like you, to construct a human barricade they can comfortably make camp behind - because, as they tell it, they are just too weary to think about the war anymore

Because if you aren’t committed to stay, it takes the teeth out of daily threats to your survival.

If you don’t want to live, watching friends who claim to love you demonstrate your life is less valuable than dinner at Olive Garden, isn’t a betrayal at all. It’s merely agreement